Every State a Swing

The conservative case for reforming the Electoral College

There are two opposing narratives among Republicans to explain how their party’s standard-bearer has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, despite GOP dominance in state legislatures and governor’s mansions across the country.

One narrative contends that Republican candidates move swiftly to the left after they secure the nomination in a misguided attempt to court voters in swing states and districts, costing them the enthusiastic support of conservative voters in November and thus sending them down to ignominious defeat. If only the nominee would maintain a more steadfast conservatism in the general election, this theory holds, the GOP would control the White House.

The alternative narrative holds that candidates are forced by the polarized nature of modern American politics to take extreme positions in order to satisfy the ideologically avid base that dominates the primaries and caucuses, leaving the eventual nominee in an impossible position for the general election, when he must appeal to millions of voters in the moderate middle. Hard-line positions taken in the primary season leave the nominee looking out of touch with the middle-class pocketbook anxieties of the broader electorate, and attempts to tack back toward the center on economic policy and social issues are perceived as insincere pandering.

Both schools of thought overlook one essential element that drives the political dynamic of national elections, skews the priorities of both parties, and leaves the GOP in a particularly difficult position in presidential years: a “winner-take-all” electoral system in 48 states that leads candidates and their partisans to focus almost all their campaigning and spending after the conventions on a tiny percentage of competitive districts in swing states, while taking for granted the electorate in states safely blue or red.

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Given that the GOP has won the popular vote in a presidential election precisely once since 1988, one might expect some receptivity from Republicans to proposals that would change the electoral map. Thus far, however, the argument for proportional representation in the Electoral College that would more accurately reflect the popular vote has been almost exclusively the province of the left. The cause received a boost among liberals after the disappointment and chaos of 2000, when Al Gore’s popular vote victory nationwide was rendered null by the scramble for a few hundred recount votes in Florida, which eventually delivered Florida’s 25 electoral votes to Bush for a tenuous victory. Conservatives, by contrast, have reflexively opposed reform of the winner-take-all Electoral College system as both unwise, given Democratic dominance in densely populated urban areas, and likely unconstitutional—certainly out of keeping with the intentions of the Founders.

While this bias reflects a healthy regard for tradition, it is simply off-base historically and wrongheaded strategically.

The Constitution gives the states exclusive control over the manner of awarding their electoral votes. The winner-take-all rule is nowhere in the Constitution, and it was demonstrably not the Founders’ preference since it was used by only three states in the first presidential election in 1789. There is simply no constitutional imperative—or practical imperative—to maintain the current winner-take-all apportionment of states’ electoral votes.

The winner-take-all status quo is inarguably dysfunctional. Because relatively few states are competitive in November, presidential campaigns concentrate their efforts on 12–18 battleground states, depending on the year. And the disparity in time spent campaigning and money spent gets worse every cycle. In 2012, two-thirds of general-election campaign events were in just four states: Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Iowa. Thirty-eight states were relegated to “flyover country” and ignored entirely. Ninety-nine percent of spending on campaign ads was restricted to just ten battleground states.

The winner-take-all electoral system has had a variety of deleterious effects on politics and policy. It has certainly resulted in low voter turnout in states that are not competitive and a corresponding decrease in civic engagement generally. Ironically, it has fed both the increasing ideological polarization of American political discourse and the bland similarity of policy priorities of Democrats and Republicans at the national level. In noncompetitive states firmly in the red or blue column, the primary or caucus process is invariably dominated by the most rigid ideological factions who regard the normal process of legislative horse-trading and political compromise as an unpardonable betrayal of principles. This encourages candidates seeking the nomination to mouth the most hardline—or as Mitt Romney famously characterized it, “severe”—positions that cater to what establishment insiders derisively term “the wingnuts.”

In the case of candidate Romney, this meant flip-flopping on more moderate positions taken by Governor Romney, resulting in a widespread perception of political opportunism that worked to his great detriment in the general election—when he once again tacked back to the left. Conversely, the views of a substantial minority of voters in red states across the nation—and the substantial number of Republican voters in solidly blue states—can be safely ignored, or even derided in the language of talk radio in order to prove conservative bona fides. In short, when candidates are not forced to scrounge for every electoral vote in every state to build a majority, normal political compromise, civil dialogue, and policy substance become devalued in favor of posturing and the strategic use of “wedge issues” to win crucial battleground states and districts.

Big-money donors who pay the campaign bills and fund “independent” super PAC advertising are well aware of how this rhetorical game is played and generally take a “whatever it requires to secure the nomination” attitude towards primary-season pandering. As long as their candidate understands which side his or her bread is buttered on and maintains the policy priorities of the business and lobbying establishment in Washington once in office, somersaults on second-tier issues in order to triumph in primary season are unimportant. The big-donor money then pours into the battleground districts after the conventions and the candidate generally goes negative on the opponent, to the detriment of any positive and coherent policy agenda.

The Trump phenomenon of the past year has exposed all the inherent weaknesses of a party that cultivates the fears and anxieties of its base at election time while catering to the revolving-door establishment in D.C. once elected. The disconnect between the grassroots and the party establishment has never been more apparent. In the second quarter of 2015, Jeb Bush raised $11.4 million directly for his campaign and another $103 million for his super PAC. It now seems that money can’t buy you love among grassroots Republicans. Never has so much been spent to produce so little: Jeb’s super PAC spent about $25,000 for each caucus vote he garnered in Iowa. Trump, who spent almost nothing and takes few outside contributions, easily bested Bush in the first contests, while the GOP establishment frantically searched for an acceptable candidate to unite behind in an effort to deny him the nomination.

Trump’s remarkable rise was the logical outcome of the game that GOP leaders have been playing for years to gin up the base with culture-war outrages at election time, while maintaining policy priorities once in office that work against the interests of that very base. The Donald essentially called the bluff of the establishment. Were you railing against the Democrats for not enforcing immigration law while party leadership has been working for years to continue the flow of cheap labor for their business contributors? Then explain why you are opposed to Trump’s proposal to build a wall. Attacking Obama for not calling out “radical Islamic terrorism” and being vigilant in the fight against terror? Then explain why you oppose Trump’s call for banning the entry of Muslims into the country until security is assured. Attacking the administration for a miserable record of job creation? Then explain why you have supported lousy trade deals that have been responsible for exporting hundreds of thousands of American jobs over the last 20 years.

According to polling data, white Americans without a college degree have the bleakest view of their country and the least trust in our institutions. It’s easy to understand why, with median household income remaining almost $4,000 below the pre-recession level and well below median income in 1999. Republicans have done nothing to further, or even defend, the interests of their core voters, while feeding them red meat in election years on social issues and promises to shrink the size of government that are disregarded once in D.C. The lack of policy substance with regard to rebuilding the middle class, as opposed to defending the interests of the lobbyist/business class, has fed an anti-government, anti-establishment narrative that has now come back to bite the GOP’s leaders and impede their ability to carry out the K Street agenda of the donor class. Party insiders who have quaked at the prospect of a Trump nomination because it would accurately represent the fearful and anxious sentiments they have been stoking with the base—while doing nothing to alleviate the real plight of that base—are simply reaping the whirlwind of their cynical approach to politics and policy.

But how would electoral reform in the direction of proportional representation affect GOP policy emphasis and possibly improve Republican presidential prospects? If the party had to fight for every vote in every state, it would require building general-election coalitions in every state, not just the handful that matter. That in turn would require the adoption of an agenda and rhetoric with broader appeal in the primary season and would fundamentally change the strategy of candidates who are now only concerned about burnishing their hardline credentials among primary-season activists before throwing lots of advertising money at battleground states to do everything possible to alter their image as “the party of No” in November.

Correspondingly, the policy influence of big donors would be lessened because big money spent on advertising in swing states is much less meaningful, and much less effective, when every state is a swing state. Campaigns would be less interested in a posture of intransigence towards the agenda of political enemies—legislative gridlock—and more interested in putting together a positive agenda that finds common interests and serves the common good, an agenda that could actually garner some legislative victories. Campaign efforts and money now spent on motivating the base to turn out in order to get over the top in a few crucial districts might instead be spent on crafting a message and a vision with appeal across state lines, racial lines, class lines, and ideological lines.

Concretely, there would be more incentive to carefully craft a middle-ground agenda that can win the consensus in Congress necessary for its passage, which could really improve the prospects of the middle class, rather than stoking, feeding, and exploiting the fears of those frustrated in their quest to achieve a place in that middle class. That positive consensus agenda might include prison and sentencing reform; reform of Obamacare rather than repeal; less tax relief at the top and more in the middle; immigration and trade policies to support middle-class wages, not to undermine them; infrastructure repair and development; and more emphasis on government reform and efficiency and less emphasis on shrinking the size of government. (Our aging population makes cutting total spending virtually impossible since entitlement programs account for the lion’s share of spending.)

How might proportional representation in the Electoral College be implemented? A constitutional amendment ending winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes for all 50 states is a nonstarter. Convincing all 50 state legislatures, including those in GOP-dominated states, that proportional allocation of electoral votes would be in their interest would be virtually impossible. The “interstate compact” idea pushed by National Popular Vote is an interesting end-around: already enacted by 10 states and the District of Columbia, it would only take effect when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes (270 out of 538). When the Electoral College meets in mid-December, the national popular-vote winner would receive all of the electoral votes of the enacting states, thus assuring the presidency to the winner of the popular vote nationwide. Although the states that have enacted the measure thus far are pretty solidly Democratic, the proposal has recently picked up support among some prominent Republicans, including former Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Perhaps it’s time for Republicans to see this compact to elect the president by popular vote as an opportunity to broaden the appeal of a party with increasingly limited demographic support, rather than as a liberal plot. After all, they are not doing too well at the national level with the status quo.

Brian Robertson is CEO of Crispin Solutions, a public affairs and communications consulting firm, and co-founder of The Common Trust. Rob Wasinger is executive director of The Common Trust.

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31 Responses to Every State a Swing

I’ll start this comment by saying I understand that what I am about to propose has all the promise of the proverbial snowball in hell of making it any further than a sad barroom argument. If we’re going to try and reform our profoundly dysfunctional political system, we need to stop guaranteeing those elected to high office a set term, absent being convicted of some crime. Elect them for some term, yes, but take a page from the UK playbook and allow for early elections if a vote of no confidence in current policy occurs. Make our legislators and executive branch a bit more responsible to the electorate. And end legal bribery by limiting the amount of money candidates can spend trying to buy votes. In short, reduce corruption by maybe 3/4 ( I understand we can’t get rid of it) and maybe we might get a government that had some interest in governance, for a change.

Getting rid of the winner-take-all allocation of electoral college votes would do several things, but most importantly it would overwhelm the legal system’s ability to prevent electoral fraud. Having every state effectively in play would ultimately result not only in the dead voting, but the dead voting multiple times in every state. The parties would do everything they could to retain as much of their EC vote advantage in their solid states as possible, and the legal resources of all levels of government would not only be overwhelmed against the tide, but would be “encouraged” to look the other way by which ever party was in power. Winning a presidential election would ultimately come down to which party was better at stuffing the ballot box.

The news is grim for the GOP this cycle, too. The magic number is 270.

– Solid red states can comfortably assume they will start with about 102 electors.
– Solid blue states can make the same assumption about 246 electors.
– 270 electors are needed to win a presidential election.
– The Republican candidate will need to come up with 168 electors from the swing states and flip one of the blue states to red.
– The Dems need only to find 24 electors to win. Of course, if they flip a red state to blue they will win in a historic landslide. http://www.redstate.com/diary/6755mm/2013/08/10/can-any-republican-win-270-electoral-votes-in-2016-or-ever-again/

The link gets you to an article analysis by a top contributor to a very conservative website.

This is math, and we’re dealing with a set of numbers that only adds up to 538, so it’s simple math. Run the numbers. In every recent election, a proportional Electoral College would have produced results less in line with the national popular vote, including electing several Republicans other than Dubya who lost the national vote, than the current Electoral College. Winner-take-all is the least-bad way to organize the Electoral College vote, as long as we have an Electoral College that deliberately disenfranchises citizens in large-population states by awarding votes for Senate representation.

The national popular vote compact is pretty much the only idea anyone has bandied about since the 2000 election that wouldn’t make our presidential elections worse.

Unfortunately the Founders baked “poison pill” political pathology into the Constitution.

When the Constitution was drafted the free-person population ratio of the largest state (Virginia) to the smallest state, (Delaware) was 9 to 1. The largest ratio now is 66 to 1, (California vs. Wyoming). The congressional and Electoral College delegation ratio of CA to WY is only 18 to 1. 21 states have 4 or fewer House representatives and 2 Senators. Consequently, the small states now have an enormously over-inflated impact in the Senate and in the Electoral College.

The poison pill element is that it would take a constitutional amendment to change the configuration of the Senate and the allocation of electors in the Electoral College. And since the Constitution specifies that constitutional amendments be ratified based on a super majority of state delegations rather than state populations, that makes changing the fundamentals of the Constitution essentially infeasible because the small states would never agree to dilute their excessive political weight in national politics.

Of course the Founders never expected it to turn out this way, but how they configured the Federal Government put into play a slow dysfunctional pathway leading to the current level of sclerotic governmental pathology.

The Congressional system awards representation disproportionately to small, generally rural, states. The Electoral college reinforces this advantage, increasing the heft of small rural states in Presidential Elections.

Getting rid of the Electoral college would result in increased power and influence for urbanized ethnic minorities and cosmopolitan voter groups.

These are obviously the voters who are naturally most supportive of small government and traditional values (it is practically an immutable characteristic if Karl Rove is to be believed), but they don’t know it yet because the message hasn’t been translated in Spanish, yes?

I am almost beginning to believe that everything published on behalf of Conservative, Inc. should bear the headline:

“There are two opposing narratives among Republicans to explain how their party’s standard-bearer has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, despite GOP dominance in state legislatures and governor’s mansions across the country.”

There is a third narrative. A state’s population wants democrats to bring home the bacon from Washington DC, but they want Republicans in charge of their own money. This is especially true with farm states.

I’m all for it. Now get rid of the voter suppression laws springing up in red state after red state and make this a fair election. Stopping citizens, who generally skew Democratic, from voting is among some of the more creative tricks the GOP has come up with. They understand that allowing the president to be nominated with the popular vote all but ensures they’ll never see the inside of the Oval Office again, unless invited.

The National Popular Vote bill would not “get rid of the Electoral College.”

The National Popular Vote bill would replace current state winner-take-all laws that award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who get the most popular votes in each separate state (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), in the enacting states, to a system guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes for, and the Presidency to, the candidate getting the most popular votes in the entire United States.

The bill retains the constitutionally mandated Electoral College and state control of elections. It ensures that every voter is equal, every voter will matter, in every state, in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.

When states with a combined total of at least 270 electoral votes enact the bill, the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC would get the needed majority of 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. The bill would thus guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes and the majority of Electoral College votes.

If I’m understanding the article correctly, here are the problems: The policy positions of GOP candidates change depending on whether (1) it’s the primary or general election season; (2) they occupy an office or are campaigning for it.

Here is the proposed solution: Abolish the winner-take-all Electoral College requirement most states have and enact an alternative that more accurately reflects the popular vote.

This argument doesn’t work for three reasons. First, it is a non-sequitur. Changing the way states count their Electoral College votes is a structural solution that will not solve policy frustrations. Let’s assume that winner-take-all is changed in every state to award the winner of each congressional district its electoral vote, and the winner of the most congressional districts in each state would receive the two additional votes it has due to its Senators. This is the set-up Nebraska and Maine have. Granted, these are not swing states, but would we say that the way politicians run for office is any different in these two states than in the other 48? Politicians still appeal to their base in the primary and seek to appeal to the most in the general election. Winner-take-all or not, this disparity remains.

Second, this reform proposal assumes that the popular vote is more legitimate than the Electoral vote. This assumption has been behind nearly every proposal to reform or abolish the Electoral College since its inception. Among the reasons Publius gives in The Federalist Papers in support of the Electoral College is that its function as an intermediary body between the voters and the office holders acted to temper popular passions. Is this no longer a concern? Just looking at this election cycle, the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders seems to underscore this concern. Isn’t much of the worry about Donald Trump precisely because he appeals to the passions of the people rather than their reason? So how would removing the institution that tempers these passions help the policy proposals, appeals, and actions of politicians? It strikes me that our voting process would be even more prone to pandering than it already is.

Third, eliminating winner-take-all would diminish the importance of less populated states, thereby further eroding regionalism within the country. Regionalism is important to the United States because it serves as a cultural check on political action. When there are various distinct regions in the United States, there are inevitably differing attitudes among the people who live there. When there are differences of preference and opinion on things, there tends to be a better political debate because all sides are considered before action is taken. Reducing the influence of regions within the US serve only to homogenize out political dialogue even further, making conditions even more favorable for a candidate of the current mood to rise to power. There would be more Donald Trumps, not fewer of them by taking away winner-take-all.

These reasons are sufficient to demonstrate that we should remain with the winner-take-all system instead of getting rid of it.

Support for a national popular vote is strong in rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states.

None of the 10 most rural states (VT, ME, WV, MS, SD, AR, MT, ND, AL, and KY) is a battleground state.
The current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes does not enhance the influence of rural states, because the most rural states are not battleground states, and they are ignored. Their states’ votes were conceded months before by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns. When and where voters are ignored, then so are the issues they care about most.

With National Popular Vote, when every popular vote counts and matters to the candidates equally, successful candidates will find a middle ground of policies appealing to the wide mainstream of America. Instead of playing mostly to local concerns in Ohio and Florida, candidates finally would have to form broader platforms for broad national support. Elections wouldn’t be about winning a handful of battleground states.

Now political clout comes from being among the handful of battleground states. 80% of states and voters are ignored by presidential campaign polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits. Their states’ votes were conceded months before by the minority parties in the states, taken for granted by the dominant party in the states, and ignored by all parties in presidential campaigns.

State winner-take-all laws negate any simplistic mathematical equations about the relative power of states based on their number of residents per electoral vote. Small state math means absolutely nothing to presidential campaign polling, organizing, ad spending, and visits, or to presidents once in office.

take a page from the UK playbook and allow for early elections if a vote of no confidence in current policy occurs.

How might this be done without adopting, whole-hog, some kind of parliamentary system? I’m not saying that such a system is a bad thing.

From Brett Champion:

Winning a presidential election would ultimately come down to which party was better at stuffing the ballot box.

Can you provide evidence? I think not. Is ballot box stuffing not even more more likely when the contested districts are few, allowing more resources (and better covertness) to be directed towards them?

Among the 13 lowest population states, the National Popular Vote bill has passed in 9 state legislative chambers, and been enacted by 4 jurisdictions.

Support for a national popular vote is strong in every smallest state surveyed in recent polls among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group

In the 25 smallest states in 2008, the Democratic and Republican popular vote was almost tied (9.9 million versus 9.8 million), as was the electoral vote (57 versus 58).

In 2012, 24 of the nation’s 27 smallest states received no attention at all from presidential campaigns after the conventions. They were ignored despite their supposed numerical advantage in the Electoral College. In fact, the 8.6 million eligible voters in Ohio received more campaign ads and campaign visits from the major party campaigns than the 42 million eligible voters in those 27 smallest states combined.

The 12 smallest states are totally ignored in presidential elections. These states are not ignored because they are small, but because they are not closely divided “battleground” states.

Now with state-by-state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), presidential elections ignore 12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes), that are non-competitive in presidential elections. 6 regularly vote Republican (AK, ID, MT, WY, ND, and SD), and 6 regularly vote Democratic (RI, DE, HI, VT, ME, and DC) in presidential elections.

Similarly, the 25 smallest states have been almost equally noncompetitive. They voted Republican or Democratic 12-13 in 2008 and 2012.

Voters in states that are reliably red or blue don’t matter. Candidates ignore those states and the issues they care about most.

Kerry won more electoral votes than Bush (21 versus 19) in the 12 least-populous non-battleground states, despite the fact that Bush won 650,421 popular votes compared to Kerry’s 444,115 votes. The reason is that the red states are redder than the blue states are blue. If the boundaries of the 13 least-populous states had been drawn recently, there would be accusations that they were a Democratic gerrymander.

With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency with a mere 23% of the nation’s votes!

Insider Republicans of the establishment suffer from a Trump hangover they are trying to make go away with a dose of new and improved Robo Boy Rubio Establishment Light. The same kind of Democrats are set to get themselves a Clinton deal by further stacking the deck. The old guard of both parties refuses to recognize the American people’s total disgust and anger with the political-economic-media establishment. Rejection of the establishment’s insistence on further dominating Americans lives has so angered Americans from the right to center that they follow along with Donald Trump and from left to center with Bernie Sanders. The establishment chooses to disregard the history of violent revolution that has come when people from across the political spectrum explode in rage that sparks across the short bottom gap between right and left and they come together in abandonment of any hope of ever crossing the middle ground at the top. Thus Americans too long seeing and suffering a bleak future declare NO MORE!

Now not more go-along-get-along subservient acceptance of the same-O 30-years of trickledown economics that has so decayed away the American Dream and left empowered insatiably greedy hoarders of the nation’s and world’s wealth, The resolve to tolerate NO MORE is now shared across the generations and by me—one of the lifelong Democrats born in the depths of the Great Depression early hearing the fireside chats of FDR challenging Americans for their Rendezvous Destiny and coming of age playing a child’s part in the making peaceful progress at home and by America becoming the Arsenal of Democracy in the violent fight abroad that quelled the threat that Axis Powers had set loose upon the world. Our elders in their doing proved themselves to be a Greatest Generation of Americans that all the way built themselves together membership in the largest middle class in a land of the most abundatley shared prosperity ever on Earth.

Thought the trail ahead for older Americans has drawn shorter, for too long we have been the ones that have gone along to just get along, and for the sake of our kith and kin we and they cannot afford same-O more with a vote for Establishment Left Hillary Clinton. Time to vote for real progress by casting a ballot for Bernie Sanders. And if need be write Sanders in on the ballot—UNLESS!

Unless it appears that Clinton might win and then it would be better to vote for Trump to assure that the inevitable CRASH that comes of more of the same falls in ending quagmire of conservatism in fuel of the phoenix fire that sparks the birth the progressive spirit of another generation that has their rendezvous with destiny via government of the people, by the people and for the people fashions the best of times for all. Best avoid the chancing warming of good from bad, and better FEEL THE BERN of peaceful revolution of together building a better future.

The big cities are not as big as many people think they are, and we know how presidential campaigns are actually run when every vote is equal and matters.

The 10 biggest cities in the United States (San Jose is the 10th) together account for only 8% of the U.S. population.

The 100 biggest cities (San Bernadino is the 100th) contain just one-sixth of the U.S. population. The 100 biggest cities voted 63% Democratic in 2004.

By coincidence, one-sixth of the U.S. population lives outside the nation’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA’s). This rural population voted 60% Republican.

The remaining two thirds of the U.S. population lives inside a Metropolitan Statistical Area, but outside a central city. These suburban areas are evenly divided politically.

Real-world presidential candidates campaign everywhere—big metro areas, medium-sized metro areas, and rural areas—in elections in which every vote is equal, and the winner is the candidate who receives the most popular votes.

Under a nationwide vote for President, every vote is equal. The one-sixth of the people who live in the nation’s 100 biggest cities would be no more important—or less important—than the one-sixth of the people who live in rural areas.

“The “interstate compact” idea pushed by National Popular Vote is an interesting end-around: already enacted by 10 states and the District of Columbia, it would only take effect when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes (270 out of 538). When the Electoral College meets in mid-December, the national popular-vote winner would receive all of the electoral votes of the enacting states, thus assuring the presidency to the winner of the popular vote nationwide.”

If you want to make it more important that the parties’ Presidential candidates campaign in more states, dividing the Electoral College vote according to Congressional districts, rather than whole States, might be an improvement. But no idea is worse than the idea of making the composition of the Electoral College turn on the result of a national popular vote for President. Not only does it make a mockery of the Constitutional system designed to assure the President would not be popularly elected and could not assume office on a power base separate from the States which themselves chose him for the office. In the event of a close election, it will throw the resolution of the polling into chaos. When, in 2000, the razor thin margin in the State of Florida, with sufficient electoral votes to determine the outcome of the election, threatened a hand made, vote by vote recount of every ballot cast in the State of Florida. Let every state’s electoral votes depend, not upon the outcome in that state, but upon a compilation of all national polls, and a close election will result in calls for recounts in every precinct in the nation. The court cases to spring up will make Bush v. Gore look like an uncontested proceeding.

If we really want to make the outcome of Presidential elections, the selection of our Electoral College, and thus, our President and Vice-President, more responsive to the people instead of the monied interests who can pay for expensive national campaigns and saturate the media with fear and propaganda, we should move closer to that which the Founders comtemplated – where most State legislatures, in choosing the means of selecting their States electors, would decide to make that choice themselves. Presidential electors chosen by state representatives would be more responsive to the needs and desires of the States themselves. The National parties, to influence the outcome of the Presidential sweepstakes, would have to work for the election of their party’s candidates to state legislatures, and those campaigns would have to be geared to the popular desire respecting local and state issues – not the interests of the Wall Street donor class.

For states that do retain popular elections, they should have candidates file to serve as Electors in their own names, not in the name of any political party – people who are chosen in order to exercise their own judgment, not simply cast a ballot for someone chosen for them by a party’s apparatus.

The Constitutional system was not designed to assure the President would not be popularly elected.

Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”

The Constitution does not prohibit any of the methods that were debated and rejected.
A majority of the states appointed their presidential electors using two of the rejected methods in the nation’s first presidential election in 1789 (i.e., appointment by the legislature and by the governor and his cabinet). Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.

In 1789, in the nation’s first election, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors by appointment by the legislature or by the governor and his cabinet, the people had no vote for President in most states, and in them, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.

The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state’s electoral votes.

“The bottom line is that the electors from those states who cast their ballot for the nationwide vote winner are completely accountable (to the extent that independent agents are ever accountable to anyone) to the people of those states. The National Popular Vote states aren’t delegating their Electoral College votes to voters outside the state; they have made a policy choice about the substantive intelligible criteria (i.e., national popularity) that they want to use to make their selection of electors. There is nothing in Article II (or elsewhere in the Constitution) that prevents them from making the decision that, in the Twenty-First Century, national voter popularity is a (or perhaps the) crucial factor in worthiness for the office of the President.”
– Vikram David Amar – professor and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the UC Davis School of Law. Before becoming a professor, he clerked for Judge William A. Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Harry Blackmun at the Supreme Court of the United States.

The current state-by-state winner-take-all system of electing the President has repeatedly produced unnecessary artificial crises that would not have arisen if there had been a single large national pool of votes and if the winner had been the candidate who received the most popular votes nationwide.

There have been five litigated state counts in the nation’s 57 presidential elections under the current system—that is, a probability of 1-in-11. This high frequency contrasts with the mere 22 recounts among the 4,072 statewide general elections in the 13-year period between 2000 and 2012—that is, a probability of 1-in-185. In other words, the probability of a disputed presidential election conducted using the current state-by-state winner-take-all system is dramatically higher than the probability of a recount in an election in which there is a single pool of votes and in which the winner is the candidate who receives the most popular votes.

Recounts would be far less likely under the National Popular Vote bill than under the current system because there would be a single large national pool of votes instead of 51 separate pools. Given the 1-in-185 chance of a recount and given that there is a presidential election every four years, one would expect a recount about once in 740 years under a National Popular Vote system. In fact, the probability of a close national election would be even less than 1-in-185 because the 1-in-185 statistic is based on statewide recounts, and recounts become less likely with larger pools of votes. Thus, the probability of a national recount would be even less than 1-in-185 (and even less frequent than once in 740 years).

Recounts are rare in actual practice. Few votes are changed by recounts. Few recounts ever change the outcome of an election.

The average change in the margin of victory as a result of a statewide recount is a mere 294 votes.

I’m skeptical that reforming the Electoral College in the ways suggested would improve the quality of Republican candidates; the dynamics of the primary system, and the Republican electorate, are the problem there.

But any system for electing a President that risks installing a candidate who got less votes than other candidates is a disaster waiting to happen. The only reason the Electoral College hasn’t been altered already is that such an event has been very rare in our history.

It’s worth noting that proposals that depend on congressional districts, rather than states, being the unit that selects electors will only make the problem worse.

The Electoral College was arguably the Founding Fathers’ single biggest miscalculation. They were counting on the absence of a party system. Obviously they counted wrong.

If you want to make it more important that the parties’ Presidential candidates campaign in more states, dividing the Electoral College vote according to Congressional districts, rather than whole States, might be an improvement.

Given that most congressional districts are already non-competitive, such a proposal makes it more likely, and not less, that the winner of the popular vote will not become president. And such a result, if repeated enough times, will profoundly undermine what faith in government (of the people, by the people, and for the people) is left.

[quote]Getting rid of the winner-take-all allocation of electoral college votes would do several things, but most importantly it would overwhelm the legal system’s ability to prevent electoral fraud.[/quote]

Yes, this. One big benefit of the winner-take-all system is that it limits recounts to states that are in the balance. Without it, there’s a risk of being forced to do a recount nationwide.

So imagine this election scenario. There are 1,000 votes between two candidates nationwide. Delegates are allocated along popular vote. It would be like the 2000 Florida debacle on steroids.

Although personally I think they can allocate delegates by Congressional district and that would work out also.

There are too many problems with trying to match delegates to the popular vote.

Brett Champion is absolutely right. Enabling the potentiality of massive voter fraud would be the real result of such a popular vote system when we are talking about 330 million+ in the country. Frankly, repealing the awful 17th amendment would do more than anything else in restoring the diversity of different states varying interests at election time, and the idea that low voter turnout during Presidential elections or midterms is this terrible problem is mythical. A lower turnout often IS a more educated turnout.

Executing electoral fraud without detection requires a situation in which a very small number of people can have a very large impact.

Under the current state-by-state winner-take-all system, a small number of people in a closely divided battleground state can affect enough popular votes to flip all of that state’s electoral votes and, hence, the national outcome.
A mere 537 popular votes in Florida determined Florida’s 25 electoral votes in 2000 and decided the national winner in an election in which 105,000,000 votes were cast.

A shift of 1,710 votes in California would have switched all of California’s electoral votes and thereby defeated President Wilson in 1916, despite his nationwide lead of 579,000 votes. It is easier to flip 1,710 votes than 579,000 votes.

As former Colorado Congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo (R) said,
“The issue of voter fraud … won’t entirely go away with the National Popular Vote plan, but it is harder to mobilize massive voter fraud on the national level without getting caught, than it is to do so in a few key states. Voter fraud is already a problem. The National Popular Vote makes it a smaller one.”

The outcome of a presidential election is less likely to be affected by fraud with a single large nationwide pool of votes than under the current state-by-state winner-take-all system.

Conservatives should be advocating for a return, state-by-state, to the direct appointment of electors by state legislators. There’s nothing conservative (in the locally-oriented sort of sense) about proportional awarding of electors, since this is a state-led suicide compact (in terms of state sovereignty). Much more populist than anything. But populism can lead to tyranny. I’d anticipate more candidates appealing to the least common denominator, not less.

Another way of thinking about this is, the proposed “reform” of the EC actually kills the EC, which is in the Constitution. And it does so as a clever short-cut to clearing all the checks and balances that go into amending the Constitution. You’re too quick to dismiss the point, methinks. Hardly a “conservative” approach–falling short of what I’d expect to read on this website. Was no neocon forum available?

@ Frand Liebkind – I’m not sure I know what a full blown parliamentary system is. My perhaps naive assumption is that the word comes from the French word “parlement”, or “talking”, and it just refers to systems in which policies are first discussed and then voted on. Maybe requiring elections following a no confidence vote defines the parliamentary system; again, I don’t know. My idea is that if we had a way to make our elected leaders stay at least a little in line with public opinion all the time, instead of every 2, 4, or 6 years, we might get a government more attuned to public interest. It might at least make officials more cautious. Mr. Cameron in the UK said a year or so ago that there ought to be a referendum on staying in or leaving the European Union. That is now set for June and the result may consolidate his leadership or cost him his job. If President Obama had faced loss of the office if the Affordable Care Act had not passed, would he have staked his presidency on it? I think the answer is he would have if he was personally committed and thought the public was with him, or at least evenly divided, but the point is he would have had more skin in the game.

Our system allows elected officials to ignore the public and concentrate on lobbyists and other contributors until an election is imminent, then flood the media with as much propaganda as they think they need to get through. I’m not sure what the personal wealth cutoff is for year round political value is, but I am sure it’s several multiples of the average household income in the US. Our government is a corrupt, bought and paid for function of the rich. We need a way to change that.

I see most of this as entirely unnecessary. The current red/blue divide is largely driven by one’s feelings about explicit public displays of Christianity and about politicians who proffer policies allegedly rooted in religious principles.

I live in a state that is solidly blue. Even so, Republicans fare quite well in statewide elections. But these Republicans don’t sound anything like Republicans in evangelical-dominated red states. In my neck of the woods, religion is a private, family matter; people just don’t talk about it in public. And we’re not likely to advocate for certain political positions merely because they’re consistent with our religious values.

If the GOP would move toward more neutral positions on things like abortion and same-sex marriage, I suspect that a number of blue states would be in play again. The current divide simply reflects the fact that most Americans prefer a cleaner separation between church and state than one sees in the GOP at the national level.

I see most of this as entirely unnecessary. The current red/blue divide is largely driven by one’s feelings about explicit public displays of low-tax and fiscally conservative ideals and about politicians who proffer policies allegedly rooted in limited government principles.

I live in a state that is solidly blue. Even so, Republicans fare quite well in statewide elections. But these Republicans don’t sound anything like Republicans in small government-dominated red states. In my neck of the woods, fiscal conservatism is a private, family matter; people just don’t talk about it in public. And we’re not likely to advocate for certain political positions merely because they’re consistent with our limited government values.

If the GOP would move toward more neutral positions on things like low taxes on corporations and the rich and on expansion of government benefits, I suspect that a number of blue states would be in play again. The current divide simply reflects the fact that most Americans prefer more robust, interventionist government than one sees in the GOP at the national level.

There’s a great deal to be said for seriously considering how the Venetians did it: a system explicitly designed to reduce the likelihood of factional Doges, surviving along with the Republic for over 500 years.